TRT-London asked me tonight about oil-market impacts of the deal between Iran and Oman. The title says most of it.
Of course there has been hardship globally with higher energy prices and volatility. However, compared to what would have happened 10 or 20 years ago, this is very significantly smaller.
Oil on average has been up only 25%, and refined products 36% since 28 Feb. (“Why Oil Prices Could Hit a Breaking Point by Year End,” WSJ, Video, 3aug26). Why?
The huge surplus in oil production that was building globally for at least three or four years, plus the constantly falling energy intensity of the economy, plus the high degree of interconnectedness of the one-global-barrel market (the name of this blog for the past 15 years) explains this relatively mild impact thus far. I explained this, and the geopolitical advantage, the long time line, it has given Trump and Washington to go slow and talk a lot as compared to the urgency they would have had earlier.
This is both a case of:
a) More oil being produced globally due to huge advances in petroleum and gas exploration and production (E&P) technologies,
Especially in the USA, where a new “Fracking 4.0” stage of the Shale Revolution seems to be underway, one that could boost extraction rates of previously drilled wells by factors of 50-300%, according to various industry tech reports. This is all about US high tech and perfecting of methodologies. (See, Javier Blas, “Shale Oil’s Next Revolution Should Worry OPEC” Bloomberg, 30Nov25).
In addition, there have also been significant tech improvements in deeper offshore production, and in exploration generally, leading to a lot of new, large-sized proven reserves to exploit And,
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The Global Barrel 